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BERLIN, GERMANY - DECEMBER 07: Brwa Nouri of Ostersunds FK celebrates together with Sotirios Papagiannopoulus who scored the opening goal to 0-1 during the UEFA Europa League group J match between Hertha BSC and Ostersunds FK at the Olympic Stadium on December 7, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Nils Petter Nilsson/Getty Images)

Swedish side Östersunds FK take on English giants Arsenal in the Europa League knock-out stages this week. It’s an incredible achievement for a club that was in Sweden’s fourth tier of soccer as recently as 2011. Many clubs that have had such a rapid climb up the divisions owe their success to piles of cash being pumped into the club, but not Östersunds FK. The club’s Europa League squad still contains players who were with the club at the start of its meteoric rise through the leagues.

The architect of the club’s success is its English head coach Graham Potter. English coaches have changed Swedish soccer in the past, with Bob Houghton and Roy Hodgson introducing a more direct English style of soccer to the country, and winning a host of titles between them, Houghton even leading Malmö FF to the final of the European Cup. Their legacy has endured in the way many clubs in Sweden play their soccer, but when Graham Potter joined Östersunds, he wanted the club to change its soccer philosophy away from the direct style of many Swedish clubs, and introduce a more tactically flexible, possession-based style of play where players have the chance to develop.

Moving to Sweden was a risk. Before joining Östersunds FK, Potter had been coaching with the relatively safe confines of university-level soccer in England. He moved to Sweden for the challenge of coaching in professional soccer and the opportunity to create an identity for the club. Potter was attracted by the chairman’s vision for Östersunds, but he joined a side that had just been relegated, and was low on morale. The job was made harder by the club’s location in the small town of Östersund in central Sweden, a quiet backwater of 50,000 people, far to the north of Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg on Sweden’s southern coast. When Östersunds were outside Sweden’s top two tiers, getting players to move up north was a challenge, so Potter changed the club’s recruitment strategy, even bringing in some young, hungry players from England who had fallen through the cracks of the English system.

One of those players was Jamie Hopcutt. He scored in Östersunds’ Europa Cup qualifying match against Galatasaray, but before joining the Swedish club, he was playing his football for Tadcaster Albion in the ninth tier of English soccer. Hopcutt got an email from LFE, a program that helps players who have been released from professional teams, offering him a place on a trial day at Östersunds. He told me that Graham Potter had coached him when he was a young boy at York City, and as being a professional soccer player was Hopcutt’s ‘ultimate dream’, the then-19-year-old didn’t take much convincing to up sticks and move to Sweden’s ‘winter city’.

Graham Potter has tried to make Östersunds FK a low-pressure environment-- no easy thing in the results-driven soccer business. Supported by club chairman Daniel Kindberg, who says soccer ‘is a mental game about decision making and courage’, Potter built confidence and team spirit through some surprising methods, such as getting the players to perform ‘Swan Lake’ to fans and locals. His aim is to create players that are brave and can think clearly in a stressful situation.

I’m a football (soccer) writer who follows what’s happening in the game across the world, from Southampton to Sapporo and everywhere in between. My writing has appeared in the Guardian and in many indie football magazines such as Pickles and In Bed With Maradona. I also pre...